Can a few well chosen words improve inclusivity?

Isaac Pinnock · 18 July 2014

Yahoo, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn have all recently published diversity reports that reveal workforces that are overwhelmingly male, white and Asian.

Changing this status quo is something we’ve always cared about, though it’s not always been an issue that’s been at the front of our minds. However, this isn’t just a personal issue, but a business one. It’s been proved over and over that having a diverse and inclusive workforce is a key to business success, especially in the field of innovation.

Currently Made by Many’s gender split for fee-earning staff is 33% female and 67% male (good, but could be better), however, at the beginning of the year I wondered whether our job adverts were doing all we could to help us create as inclusive a workforce as possible.

In a recent search for senior designers, 85% of the applicants were male. A deeper investigation into our candidate’s CVs showed that whilst we got a good range of people from different countries and backgrounds, it wasn't a very diverse list when it came to gender.

We wondered whether the language of our job adverts were putting some people off. Research from McKinsey has shown that if job adverts focused on enthusiasm and innovation, instead of aggressiveness and competitiveness, the number of applications from women rose by 40%*.

Here’s the start of our original job advert:

We’re looking for an unreasonably talented, and driven, senior designer. Someone who passionately believes user experience is integral to how people feel about a product. Who knows (and probably tells other people all the time) that design is integral to the success of all products and services.

Your role will be to fearlessly champion design throughout the lifetime of a project from initial conception to final release, from collaborating with clients, users and developers to prototyping and production design.

Fearless, champion and unreasonable. Whilst language is a deeply subjective area, it does feel that these are all words that are associated with a male-orientated world.

In April we changed our advert to start with:

We’re looking for a senior interaction designer who is deeply excited by the opportunity of creating thoughtful digital products that have lasting impact. Someone who passionately believes user experience is integral to how people feel about a product - whether it’s on the web, mobile or a connected device

Your role will be to ensure our design vision excels throughout the lifetime of a project, from initial conception to final release, from collaborating with clients, users and developers to prototyping and production design.

We immediately saw a rise in the number of women applicants to 35%. Of course, this increase could be due to other factors (including the job ad being retweeted by the fantastic Ada’s List), however it felt like a great starting point. We also saw a slight increase in the number of candidates applying from different educational backgrounds, however, not enough for us to know the cause.

Shortly after writing the senior designer role we discovered another piece of research from the Women's College Coalition that stated:

"Men apply for jobs when they meet 60% of the criteria, while women wait until they feel they meet 100% of the criteria.”

As we were about to start looking for a new junior designer, this felt like an important piece of information to help improve our job adverts even further.

The senior role used 8 bullet points to describe the role (including one point that unfortunately used the word mastermind). As the junior role required less experience, we asked whether it was possible to write a shorter yet broader list. By making the requirements less specific, could we appeal to a wider range of candidates? We reduced our bullet list down to 4.

From a language perspective, we also realised that mentioning the training and mentoring we give to designers would give a better picture of working at Made by Many. We added:

In addition to working alongside a team of experienced designers, you will also be assigned a design mentor to help you grow and develop new skills. However, we assume that you will already have a strong grounding in interaction design, form and function.

Of the candidates who applied, 44% were women. Still clearly more to do, but definitely a strong start. As our software developer Melissa wrote earlier in the week about altering school curriculums, the issue of inclusivity in the tech industry can seem like a overwhelming problem (and certainly we know we have a long way to go in that specific domain). Whilst I have no doubt that wholesale changes are needed, I think it’s also true that small changes can have a big impact too.

As with all projects that are defined by inclusivity, this work has involved many people at Made by Many. Thanks to Nicki Sprinz for the original inspiration, Matt Williams and Heather Taylor Portmann for finding the original research, and to Adam Morris and Heather for helping to write, review and improve the adverts.

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Isaac Pinnock

Isaac is a founding member of Made by Many, where he employs his experience in rapid web prototyping, and in transforming a set of business requirements into a viable and desirable customer experience. Isaac is an interaction designer who understands how to develop a service idea and make it real.